JERSEY’S Health Minister and a former Scrutiny chair have been found to have breached the standards that govern States Members’ behaviour.
The Commissioner for Standards found that Health Minister Karen Wilson and ex-Scrutiny panel chair Deputy Geoff Southern “misused the power of their positions” and caused reputational damage to fellow panel members by circulating untrue information about them.
The Health Minister was also found to have “missed a number of opportunities to rectify the matter”.
The commissioner for standards, Dr Melissa McCullough, described it as “quite unbelievable” that there was “such a lack of willingness to listen, understand and put the record straight”.
Both Deputy Wilson and Deputy Southern have now been asked to apologise to Deputy Barbara Ward for breaking the code of conduct for States Members.
The Health Minister and the former chair – who used to sit on the Health and Social Security Panel alongside Deputy Ward before Deputy Southern was ousted as chair when he lost a confidence vote in March – were referred to the commissioner earlier this year by Assistant Health Minister Rose Binet.
She alleged that “much stress and unjustifiable reputational damage was caused to both Deputy Ward and Deputy Andy Howell by Deputy Southern and Deputy Wilson’s untrue statements about the Deputies”.
The “untrue statements” were alleged to have been made in a letter from the Health Minister to Deputy Southern in February.
The commissioner found that the Health Minister’s letter “wrongly suggested that Deputy Ward cannot be trusted to keep confidence and that Deputy Howell is a bully”.
In the letter, the minister accused Deputy Ward of referencing information about the appointment of Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor that she had gleaned in a previous private meeting in a public Scrutiny hearing.
The minister also accused Deputy Ward of conveying sensitive information about the States Employment Board to the Scrutiny panel and claimed that she was “routinely drawing the [Health Scrutiny] panel away from its purpose”.
The minister claimed in the letter that Deputy Howell had “not always acted in a professional manner towards the public servants responsible for Health and Community Services”.
She described an incident of “clear vitriol and disrespect” during a meeting, which resulted in the Health Minister having to ask her chief officer to “withdraw”.
However, the commissioner found that the letter “wrongly suggested that Deputy Ward cannot be trusted to keep confidence and that Deputy Howell is a bully”.
She added: “Being wrongly accused of these things, to the knowledge of States Members, the wider public and the press, was stressful and damaging to the Deputies’ reputations.”
The commissioner said that Deputy Wilson, in failing to acknowledge and rectify the inaccuracies in her letter following publication, failed to show respect to Deputy Ward and that Deputy Southern failed to listen, understand and act on Deputy Ward’s concerns and the information contained in the vote of no confidence proposition.
She found that both the minister and the former chair breached paragraph 5 of the Code of Conduct for elected officials, which focuses on maintaining and strengthening the public’s trust and confidence in States Members.
Although they were ordered to apologise to Deputy Ward for suggesting that she could not be trusted, the Health Minister did not have to apologise for accusing Deputy Howell of “clear vitriol and disrespect” during a meeting.
Another officer at the meeting described it as “wildly unprofessional”, and Deputy Southern claimed that he was “forced to have to step in, somewhat in the manner of a wrestling referee, to bring order back to the meeting”.
Although the commissioner found that the phrasing of “clear vitriol” was “an exaggeration” and “inaccurately characterises Deputy Howell’s behaviour at the meeting”, she concluded that “behaviour is subjective in nature” and “clear vitriol” was “what the minister thought of Deputy Howell’s behaviour”.
The commissioner also suggested that Deputy Wilson and Deputy Southern may also wish to apologise to States Members to set the record straight “given that the minister’s letter and Deputy Southern’s response were central to the VoNC [vote of no confidence] proposition and debate which led to much commentary by both Deputy Wilson and Deputy Southern, including to the press”.
